Up until a few months ago, the only sanction the judicial system had available to make people pay fines imposed in the lower courts was prison. I gather the ration was one days jail for every $100 in unpaid fines. Or something like that. For the lumpenproletariat this was no incentive at all to pay fines.
I mean, if you don't have a job, $100 a day doesn't seem like a bad bargain at all. Especially given that if you haven't got a job, there's no way you can afford to pay in the first place. But in any case, the Magistrates haven't actually been able to send people to jail for unpaid fines for years. Not enough room for them all.
So thousands of people have simply ignored fines.
But all of a sudden, even the hard-cases are starting to pay their fines. Under threat of having their drivers licences, gun licences and other such things confiscated. When I say pay off, I mean of course start paying small installments off the outstanding fines. (They'll never actually pay them off entirely, but some payments are enough to stave off the new punishments.)
As Carrol says, prisons are basically a system of torturing people. But physical torture is only so effective. For your middle-class accountant an lawyer, imprisonment is such an unimaginable horror that it is a deterrent. (To the extent that they expect to get caught. which is a bit of a problem.) But for your brutalised lumpenproletariat the prison system has to be inhumanly savage to bother them.
This of course can not be achieved merely by brutal prison guards. You need real monsters to inspire that kind of fear, mere routine beatings are futile for someone for whom this is an accepted part of life. You need someone who can't be let out of the prison at the end of their shift in other words.
Anyhow, I agree that prisons ought to be abolished. For one thing they don't actually work as a deterrent. That ought to be the end of the argument. As for rehabilitation, plainly some kind of mental health institution would be a more logical solution.
Those wanting retribution could also benefit from mental health treatment. Really, its not a healthy attitude.
Of course in the context of a class society crime has to be deterred. The ruled classes have to be kept in line, I can appreciate that. There has to be order. But the removal of other privileges is probably more efficient a deterrent.
I guess the difference between Australia and the US is that US citizens have less privileges to begin with, so there's not much left to take away short of imprisoning people. And even that isn't much of a deterrent unless you throw in grossly inhumane conditions, otherwise people might actually be encouraged to commit crime, by the prospect of a roof over their heads and regular meals.
Of course if US society was underpinned by an adequate social welfare system, that wouldn't be the case.
The odd nutcase who wants to kill or injure people (but for some reason isn't suited to a career as a prison screw) doesn't justify a prison system. These people quite obviously require treatment. Likewise those who can't get past their primitive instinct to retalliate.
The purpose of the legal system in a class society is to maintain some kind of order amidst the chaos. To counter the incentive to hurt and exploit others in ways that are disruptive and counter=productive. Above all , to protect those who have a lot, from those who don't. There has to be such a system, but it need not be totally savage, in fact it would probably be more efficient if it were not so.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas
At 1:02 PM -0500 6/4/09, Carrol Cox wrote:
>I somewhat disappointed in the lack of imagination on the part of most
>responders to my proposal for elimination of the prison system. It does
>bear out, however, the failure of most to grasp what social construction
>means in material actuality (or at least a failure to incorporate that
>understanding into their oridnary thinking). The comments in the thread
>were, consequently, quite banal. It sort of bothers me to be forceed to
>spell out the obvious, but I guess the intellectual and imaginative
>limitions of posters to this list make it necessary.
>
>No one even bothered to respond to my post, Prisons & Non-Prisons,"
>perhaps finding to tax their limited historical and social imaginations.
>It's much easier to fantasize a world in which cannibalistic
>child-molesters roam unmolested, or, ignoring what I said in either
>post, take for granted that such a propossal must be aimed at the
>distant future and therefore discarded as utopian.
>
>On the contrary, I stick to my refusal to draw up recipes for the
>cookshops of the future. I propose that _now_, within current capitalist
>conditions, prisons be abolished. Prisons are an institution, a
>historically determinate institution, and in no way can one define them
>simply as "areas of confinement." Abolishing them completely would
>still, obviously, leave the necessity for confing the liberty of some
>members of society, but it would also require leaving free to move about
>(with probably further restrictions for some) the bulk of those
>currently confined to the torture chambers maintained by federal, state,
>& local authorities.
>
>Probably, except for Chuck and Joanna, most of those responding were
>simply unwilling to acknowedge the actual reality of prisons and jails,
>therefore leaviang them free to remain in their naïve equation of
>prisons with confinement.
>
>Prisons are not a means to control crime, if one defines crime as
>behavior dangerous to the well-being of the population at large. In fact
>they almost certainly violent crime bu individuals who would otherwise
>have been incarcerated, but it would also almost certainly reduce the
>toal number of violent crimes, by reducing the number of violent
>criminals now being created by the criminal justice system. So at least
>by utilitarian criteria it would immediately lead to the greatst good
>for the greatest number.
>
>Prisons also corrupt a large sector of workers - prison staff. The
>events at Abu Ghraib were no surpise to those familiar with conditions
>in U.S. prisons. Those who favor retention of the prisons have to accept
>responsibility for enocouraging such torture as a normal feature of U.S.
>life, and the presence in our midst of thousands of prison employees
>who have been taught to so behave.
>
>I hope no one argues that the system should be kept but reformed.
>__That_ is truly utopian.
>
>As has been noted, much crime is created by laws, drug crimes being a
>notable instance. The War on Drugs must of course stop immediately. But
>all petty 'crime' must be decrimalized. Intelligent authorities should
>have no difficulty in building alternative methds of control. Surely the
>cost of a considerable increase in shop-lifting would be more than
>compensated for by the closing of county jails and state prisons, even
>assuming some significant increase in other methods of control.
>
>For the irreducible minimum of those who must be confined, places of
>confinement must be above all pleasant for their inmates, deprivation of
>freedom of movement being more than sufficient "punishment." It is the
>size of penal institutions and their use as institutions of toruture
>that makes confinement difficult and requires the absurd lengths to
>which prison security is carried. Civilized places of confinement
>(resorts as it were) with smaller populations would make security
>relatively simple and cheap.
>
>Already some methods of control without incarceration are in practice,
>but are used far too little and accompanied by far too many featuares
>which serve only to make the person's life as difficult as possible
>while not adding in the least to the effectiveness of control.
>
>But of course my original post did not go this far. It simply declared
>that one criterion for the appearance of a real left in the u.s. would
>be that such a left would demand abolition of prisons. One of the great
>advantages of that demand (and I repeat, it is not intended as a
>"transitional demand" but an immediate change) would be that in
>defending it, leftists would be forced to learn more about the prison
>system _and_ explore more fully just what are the real functions the
>u.s. prison system.
>
>I include below both of my earlier posts.
>
>
>Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Angela-a-Day
>
>shag wrote: I've never read her on prisons -- she notes that there is a
>double-edginess to the prison and u.s. democracy.
>
>I've both read her and heard her speak on prisons. That is my point of
>departure for arguing that one benchmark of the appearance of an actual
>left in the u.S. will be that one of its central demands will be for the
>abolition of prisons. There is no way to reform that system, for a
>number of reasons. And prisons create far more crime than they prevent.
>Also abolishing prisons would carry with it the abolition of the war on
>drugs at the same time it would contribute to solving the fiscal
>problems of the states, counties, and municipalities.
>
>+++++
>
>Subject: Prisons & Non-Prisons
>
>What is a Prison.
>
>Essentially, it is Organization for Continuous Torture of Human Beings.
>
>Consider a Resort Hotel, a fairly luxurious one.
>
>It differs from the ordinary resort hotel in one respect and one respect
>only: the residents may not leave, except under conditions established
>by those who placed them in this luxurious environment.
>
>Is it it a Prison?
>
>Carrol
>
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